Questões de Concurso

Atenção: Para responder às questões de números 61 a 65, considere o texto a seguir:
For taxpayer advocate, a familiar refrain
By Michelle Singletary, Published: January 15, 2013

    It’s not nice to tell people “I told you so.” But if anybody has the right to say that, it’s Nina E. Olson, the national taxpayer advocate.
    Olson recently submitted her annual report to Congress and top on her list of things that need to be fixed is the complexity of the tax
code, which she called the most serious problem facing taxpayers.
    Let’s just look at the most recent evidence of complexity run amok. The Internal Revenue Service had to delay the tax-filing season so it could update forms and its programming to accommodate recent changes made under the American Taxpayer Relief Act. The IRS won’t start processing individual income tax returns until Jan. 30. Yet one thing remains unchanged − the April 15 tax deadline.
    Because of the new tax laws, the IRS also had to release updated income-tax withholding tables for 2013. These replace the tables issued Dec. 31. Yes, let’s just keep making more work for the agency that is already overburdened. Not to mention the extra work for employers, who have to use the revised information to correct the amount of Social Security tax withheld in 2013. And they have to make that correction in order to withhold a larger Social Security tax of 6.2 percent on wages, following the expiration of the payroll tax cut in effect for 2011 and 2012.
    Oh, and there was the near miss with the alternative minimum tax that could have delayed the tax filing season to late March. The AMT was created to target high-income taxpayers who were claiming so many deductions that they owed little or no income tax. Olson and many others have complained for years that the AMT wasn’t indexed for inflation.
    “Many middle- and upper-middle-class taxpayers pay the AMT, while most wealthy taxpayers do not, and thousands of millionaires pay
...A.... income tax at all,” Olson said.
    As part of the recent “fiscal cliff” deal, the AMT is now fixed, a move that the IRS was anticipating. It had already decided to program its systems on the assumption that an AMT patch would be passed, Olson said. Had the agency not taken the risk, the time it would have taken to update the systems “would have brought about the most chaotic filing season in memory,” she said in her report.
    The tax code contains almost 4 million words. Since 2001, there have been about 4,680 changes, or an average of more than one change a day. What else troubles Olson? Here’s what:
    − Nearly 60 percent of taxpayers hire paid preparers, and another 30 percent rely on commercial software to prepare their returns.
    − Many taxpayers don’t really know how their taxes are computed and what rate of tax they pay.
    − The complex code makes tax fraud ...B... to detect.
    − Because the code is so complicated, it creates an impression that many taxpayers are not paying their fair share. This reduces trust in the system and perhaps leads some people to cheat. Who wants to be the sucker in this game? So someone might not declare all of his income, rationalizing that millionaires get to use the convoluted code to greatly reduce their tax liability.
    − In fiscal year 2012, the IRS received around 125 million calls. But the agency answered only about two out of three calls from people trying to reach a live person, and those taxpayers had to wait, on average, about 17 minutes to get through.
    “I hope 2013 brings about fundamental tax simplification,” Olson pleaded in her report. She urged Congress to reassess the need for the tax breaks we know as income exclusions, exemptions, deductions and credits. It’s all these tax advantage breaks that complicate the code. If done right, and without reducing revenue, tax rates could be substantially lowered in exchange for ending tax breaks, she said.

(Adapted from http://js.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/for-taxpayer-advocate-a-familiar-refrain/2013/01/15/a10327ce-5f59-11e2-b05a-605528f6b712_story.html)

DIRECTIONS: Choose the CORRECT alternative to answer questions 16 to 25.

Questions 16 to 20: Choose the CORRECT alternative to answer questions 16 to 20, according to TEXT 01.

    CES 2010 Predictions: What Will Be Hot Next Year?
    12.23.09
    The tech industry is gearing up for January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, but what should we expect? Will recession woes continue to hinder major announcements or will someone surprise us? We asked our analysts to [VERB] a few predictions about [PRON] you can expect to see from CES.
    Laptops – Cisco Cheng
    Laptops and Netbooks at CES 2010 will be riding the coat tails of Intel, which has already announced new processors and chipsets in "Arrandale" (for laptops) and "Pinetrail" (for netbooks). So this year you'll see processor brand names such as Intel Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 instead of the soon-to-be exiting Core 2 Duos.
    With netbooks, it'll still be the Atom processor, but around it will be a different supporting cast and a more energy efficient one at that, promising over 10 hours of battery life.
    Not all clamshells will have an Intel processor, though. This year's CES 2010 will give rise to a new class of netbooks, called SmartBooks and tablets.
    SmartBooks will run some variant of an ARM processor, with Qualcomm being a heavy favorite. They will not run a Windows operating system (Linux, most likely) and promise to cost as little as $200 per device. The term tablet is similar to SmartBooks in parts and software, only it won't have a physical keyboard, or at least one that's permanently attached. Tablets will take the e-book reader space to the next level and hopefully have more success than MIDs − the previous term for touchenabled netbooks without a keyboard.
    Desktops – Joel Santo Domingo
    The netbook revolution of 2009 has benefitted the desktop space. The same power-saving processors and motherboard chips from netbooks are now showing up in a plethora of ultra small nettop PCs.
    While these desktops do not promise better battery life, they do promise smaller, quieter systems, which can be hooked up to large displays, like the 50-inch HDTV in your living room.
    Don't count "traditional" desktops out though: they're still the go-to PCs in a business setting, particularly since they're less fragile and easier to service than laptops. Besides, traditional workers who live in cubicles don't need the portability of a netbook or notebook PC. They're going to get smaller, but desktops will still be on workers' desks for quite a few years to come.

(Adapted from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2357541,00.asp)

    CES 2010 Predictions: What Will Be Hot Next Year?
    12.23.09
    The tech industry is gearing up for January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, but what should we expect? Will recession woes continue to hinder major announcements or will someone surprise us? We asked our analysts to [VERB] a few predictions about [PRON] you can expect to see from CES.
    Laptops – Cisco Cheng
    Laptops and Netbooks at CES 2010 will be riding the coat tails of Intel, which has already announced new processors and chipsets in "Arrandale" (for laptops) and "Pinetrail" (for netbooks). So this year you'll see processor brand names such as Intel Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 instead of the soon-to-be exiting Core 2 Duos.
    With netbooks, it'll still be the Atom processor, but around it will be a different supporting cast and a more energy efficient one at that, promising over 10 hours of battery life.
    Not all clamshells will have an Intel processor, though. This year's CES 2010 will give rise to a new class of netbooks, called SmartBooks and tablets.
    SmartBooks will run some variant of an ARM processor, with Qualcomm being a heavy favorite. They will not run a Windows operating system (Linux, most likely) and promise to cost as little as $200 per device. The term tablet is similar to SmartBooks in parts and software, only it won't have a physical keyboard, or at least one that's permanently attached. Tablets will take the e-book reader space to the next level and hopefully have more success than MIDs − the previous term for touchenabled netbooks without a keyboard.
    Desktops – Joel Santo Domingo
    The netbook revolution of 2009 has benefitted the desktop space. The same power-saving processors and motherboard chips from netbooks are now showing up in a plethora of ultra small nettop PCs.
    While these desktops do not promise better battery life, they do promise smaller, quieter systems, which can be hooked up to large displays, like the 50-inch HDTV in your living room.
    Don't count "traditional" desktops out though: they're still the go-to PCs in a business setting, particularly since they're less fragile and easier to service than laptops. Besides, traditional workers who live in cubicles don't need the portability of a netbook or notebook PC. They're going to get smaller, but desktops will still be on workers' desks for quite a few years to come.

(Adapted from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2357541,00.asp)